Karmic Relationships: Esoteric Studies - Volume VI

Schmidt Number: S-5682

On-line since: 31st August, 2011

II

Berne,
16th April, 1924

Anthroposophical friends in Berne have already heard that the
aim of the Christmas Foundation Meeting at the Goetheanum was to
bring a new trend into the Anthroposophical Movement. The
importance of becoming conscious of this new trend cannot be stressed
too often, for the gist of the matter is this: before the Christmas
Foundation Meeting — in
practice at any rate, even if not invariably — the
Anthroposophical Society was regarded as a sort of
administrative centre for the content and the impulse of
Anthroposophy. This, essentially, has been the position since the
Anthroposophical Society made itself independent of the Theosophical
Society.

You know
that I myself had no place on the Society's Executive, but have so to
say held a completely free position within the Society. And in this
situation the Society's development has not proceeded as it
certainly could have done. The fact is that Members have been too
little alive to what might have developed on this basis. What
happened was that from about the year 1919
onwards — after the War, during which the
problem of leadership of the Society was a very difficult one —
all kinds of efforts were made and undertakings set on foot
within the Society. These undertakings were the outcome of ambitions
among the Membership and proved to be detrimental to the real
anthroposophical work — detrimental in the sense that they
aroused very strong hostility from the outside world. Naturally, when
such undertakings are set on foot in a Society resting upon occult
foundations, one must, for esoteric reasons, let them be. For think
of it — if from the beginning I had stood in the way of all
these undertakings, most of those engaged in them would have been
saying to-day that if only this or that had happened it would
have led to favourable results. But there is no doubt at all that
these things made the position of the Anthroposophical Movement in
the world increasingly difficult.

I do not
want to go into details but to take a more positive line: let me say
only that the time had come to counteract by something positive the
negative trend that had gradually appeared in the Society. Before the
Christmas Foundation Meeting I often found it necessary to emphasise
that a real foundation like the Anthroposophical
Movement — which is in truth a spiritual stream
guided and led from the super-sensible worlds by spiritual Powers and
spiritual Forces which are reflected here in the physical
worlds — should not be identified with the Anthroposophical
Society, which is simply an administrative body for the cultivation
— as far as it is capable of this — of the
anthroposophical impulse.

But since
the Christmas Foundation Meeting at the Goetheanum this has
completely changed. And it was only because of this change that there
was reason and purpose in my taking over the Presidency myself, in
cooperation with an Executive which as a unified organism can work
with great intensity for the Anthroposophical Movement. This means
that the Anthroposophical Movement and the Anthroposophical Society
are now one. Therefore what was not the position before the Christmas
Foundation Meeting has changed fundamentally since that Meeting.
Henceforward the Anthroposophical Society is to be identical
with the Anthroposophical Movement as presented in the world. But it
has thus become essential that the esoteric impulse flowing through
the Anthroposophical Movement shall also find expression in the whole
constitution of the Anthroposophical Society. Therefore since
this Christmas Foundation Meeting in Dornach it must be recognised,
unconditionally, that the establishment of the Dornach Executive is
itself an esoteric matter, that a stream of true esotericism must
flow through the Society, and that the institution of the Executive
is to be regarded as an esoteric deed. This was the premise on which
the Executive was formed.

Further,
it must always be remembered that from now onwards the
Anthroposophical Society will no longer exist merely as a body for
the administration of Anthroposophy. Anthroposophy itself must
be practised in everything that happens in the
Anthroposophical Society. What
is done must itself be anthroposophical. That,
apparently, is what it is so difficult to realise. Nevertheless
friends must gradually get it into their consciousness that this
fundamental change has taken place.

As a first
step, in the News Sheet appended to the Goetheanum Weekly, an effort
has been made to introduce into the Society something that can
provide unified substance for the membership, can further a
unified flow of spiritual reality through the Movement. A unified
trend of thought is made possible, particularly through the
weekly ‘Leading Thoughts’ which should be
a kind of basic seed for work in the Groups. It is really remarkable
that so much misunderstanding still exists as to what the
Anthroposophical Movement really is.

A short
while ago I received a letter from a fairly recent Member of the
Anthroposophical Society. This letter expatiated on the alleged
incorporation of the Christian Community into the
Anthroposophical Society. (The matter is of no importance here in
Switzerland, but I mention it as an example.) At a certain point I
had made it quite clear from the Goetheanum in Dornach how the
relationship between this Christian Community and the
Anthroposophical Society is to be thought of. I emphasised that I
cannot in any way be regarded as the Founder of the Christian
Community on the basis of the Anthroposophical Society, but that the
Christian Community formed itself, through me, by the side of the
Anthroposophical Society. At the time I used the
expression “through me as a private
individual.” The letter referred to seizes hold of this
expression, “private individual,” after saying that a
renewal of religion cannot come about through a human being but only
from the higher spheres, for a renewal of religion can be achieved
only by divine-spiritual Powers. That is quite right, but something
has been overlooked ... and it is essential for this
‘something’ to be fully grasped in the Anthroposophical
Society. What must be grasped is that the Anthroposophical Movement
as such — in which moreover there also lies the source for a
renewal of religion — certainly does not owe its origin to a
human impulse alone but has been sent into the world under the
influence of divine-spiritual Powers and by their impulse. Only when
Anthroposophy itself is seen to be a spiritual reality which flows as
an esoteric impulse through civilisation will it be possible to have
the right point of view when some other body comes into being with
its source in Anthroposophy ... and an objection like that
contained in the letter cannot arise. The consciousness must be there
that henceforward the Anthroposophical Society will be led from
the Goetheanum on an esoteric basis.

Connected
with this is the fact that a completely new trend will pervade the
Anthroposophical Movement as it must now be conceived. Therefore you
too, my dear friends, will notice how differently it has been
possible to speak since that time. In the future it will amount to
this: in all measures taken by the Anthroposophical Movement, which
is now identical with the Anthroposophical Society, the
responsibility is to the spiritual Powers themselves. But this must
be correctly understood. It must be realised that the
title “General Anthroposophical
Society” may not be used in connection with any event or
fixture organised without understanding having first been reached
with the Dornach Executive; that anything inaugurated by
Dornach may not be made further use of without corresponding
agreement with the Executive. I am obliged to speak of this because
it is constantly happening that lectures, for instance, are given
under the alleged auspices of the General Anthroposophical Society
without any application for permission having been made to Dornach.
Matters which have an esoteric foundation, formulae and the like, are
sometimes adopted without obtaining the agreement of
the Dornach Executive ... and this is absolutely
essential, for we have to do with realities, not with administrative
measures or formalities. So for all these and similar matters,
agreement must be sought from or a request made to the Dornach
Executive. If agreement is not forthcoming, the arrangements in
question will not be regarded as issuing from the Anthroposophical
Movement. This would have in some way to be made plain.

Everything
that savours of bureaucracy, all administrative formalities must in
the future be eliminated from the Anthroposophical
Society. Relationship within the Anthroposophical Society is a purely
human relationship; everything is based upon
the human reality. Perhaps I may mention here too that
this is already indicated by the fact that every one of the 12,000
Membership Cards now being issued are personally signed by me.
I was advised to have a rubber stamp made for the signature, but I
shall not do so. It is only a minor point but there is, after all, a
difference when I have let my eyes rest on the name of a Member;
thereby the personal relationship — abstract though it be
— has been made. Even if it is an external detail it should
nevertheless be an indication that in future we shall endeavour to
make relationships personal and human. Thus, for example, when it was
recently asked in Prague whether the Bohemian
Landesgesellschaft can become
a member of the Anthroposophical Society, the decision had to be that
this is not possible; individual human beings alone can become
members of the Anthroposophical Society; they can then join together
to form Groups. But they become Members
as individuals and have the Membership Card as such. Legal
entities — in other words, non-human entities — will have
no such Card. Similarly the Statutes are not official regulations but
a simple statement of what the esoteric Executive in Dornach
wishes, out of its own initiative, to do for the Anthroposophical
Movement. In future, all these things must be taken with the utmost
seriousness. Only so will it be possible to bring into being in the
Anthroposophical Society the attitude which, if it were absent, would
make it impossible for me to take over the Presidency of the Society.

Through
the Christmas Foundation, a new character and impulse is to enter
into all our work. In the future, whatever is said will have a
spiritual source — so that many things that have happened
recently, can happen no longer. A great deal of the hostility, for
instance, has arisen as a result of provocative actions in the
Society. Naturally, all kinds of questionable elements play a part,
but in the future we can no longer adopt towards the hostility the
attitude we have adopted in the past. For the Lecture-Courses are
available for everyone and can be obtained from the
Anthroposophisch-Philosophischer Verlag.
We shall not let them be advertised in the
Book Trade; their release is not to be taken to mean that they will
be handed over to the Book Trade, but they will be accessible to
everyone. This fact in itself refutes the statement that the
Anthroposophical Society is a secret society with secret literature.
In the future, however, a very great deal will flow through the
Anthroposophical Movement in respect of which no kind of relation
with a hostile outside world will be possible. Much of what will be
introduced into the teachings of the Anthroposophical Society in the
future will be of such a nature that it will inevitably evoke
hostility in the outside world; but we shall not worry about it
because it is a matter of course.

And so I
want to speak to you to-day in this spirit, to speak particularly of
how different a light is shed upon the historical evolution of
mankind when the study of karmic relationships in world-existence is
pursued in real earnest.

At the
very first gathering held in Berlin for the purpose of founding the
German Section of the Theosophical Society, I chose for a lecture I
proposed to give, the title:
Practical Questions of Karma.
I wanted to introduce then what I intend to
achieve now, namely, the serious and earnest study of Karma.

In the
German Section of the Theosophical Society at the time there were
several old Members of the Society. They literally quaked at my
intention to begin in such an esoteric way. And in actual fact the
attitude and mood for it were not there. It was quite obvious how
little the people were prepared in their souls for such things. It
was impossible at that time to proceed with the
theme ‘Practical Questions of Karma’ in
the form that had been intended. Conditions made it necessary to
speak in a much more exoteric way. But now, with more than two
decades of preparatory work behind us, a beginning must be made with
real esotericism. The Christmas Foundation Meeting, when the esoteric
impulse came into the Society, has actually taken place, and so now a
link can be made with that time when the intention was to introduce
this esoteric trend into the Society.

What
is the historical evolution of humanity, when we
consider what is revealed by the fact of repeated earthly lives? When
some personality appears as a leading figure in the evolution of
humanity, we must say: This personality is the bearer of an
Individuality of soul-and-spirit who was already present many times
in earthly existence and who carries over into this earthly life the
impulses from earlier incarnations. Only in the light of his earlier
earthly lives can we really understand such a personality. From this
we see at once how what was working in earlier epochs of
world-history is carried over from those earlier epochs by human
beings themselves. The civilisation of to-day has developed out of
the human beings who belong to the present in the wider sense. But
they, after all, are the same souls who were there in earlier epochs
and assimilated what those earlier civilisations brought into being;
they themselves have carried it over into the present. The same
applies to epochs other than the present. Only when we can discover
what has been carried over by human souls from one epoch into the
other can we understand this onflowing stream of the impulses working
in civilisation. But then we have history in the concrete, not in the
abstract. People usually speak only about ideas working in
world-history, about moral will or moral impulses in general which
carry over the fruits of civilisation from one epoch into the others.
But the bearers of these fruits of earlier civilisations are the
human souls themselves, for they incarnate
again and again. Moreover it is only in this way
that an individual realises what he has himself become, how he
has carried over that which forms the basis of his bodily destiny,
his destiny in good and evil alike. When, as a first step, we ponder
how history has been carried from one epoch into another by the human
beings themselves in their repeated earthly lives, then, and only
then are the secrets, the great enigmas of historical evolution, unveiled.

To-day I
want to show by three examples how karma works through actual
personalities. One of these examples leads us into the wide arena of
history; the other two deal more with the reincarnations of
particular individuals.

Our modern
civilisation contains a great many elements that are really not
altogether in keeping with Christianity, with true Christian
evolution. Natural science is brought even into the elementary
schools, with the result that it has an effect upon the thinking even
of people who have no scientific knowledge. These impulses are really
not Christian. Whence do they originate?

You all
know that about six hundred years after the founding of Christianity,
Arabism, inspired by Mohammed, began to spread abroad.
In Arabism, Mohammed founded a body of doctrine which in a certain
sense was at variance with Christianity. To what extent at variance?
The concept of the three forms of the Godhead — Father, Son,
Spirit — is of the very essence of Christianity. The origin of
this lies away back in the ancient Mysteries in which a man was led
through four preparatory stages and then through three higher stages.
When he had reached the fifth stage, he came forth as a
representative of the Christ; at the seventh and highest stage as a
representative of the Father. I want only to make brief mention of this.

It is
the Trinity that makes it possible for the impulse of
freedom to have its place in the evolution of
Christianity. We look upwards to the Father God, seeing in the Father
God the spirituality implicit in all those forces of the Universe
which go out from the Moon to Earth existence. All those forces which
in Earth existence have to do
with the impulses of physical germination —
in man, therefore, with propagation — proceed from the Moon. It
must, of course, always be remembered that the human process of
reproduction has its spiritual side. From the pre-earthly existence
of spirit-and-soul we come down to earthly existence, uniting
with a physical body. But everything that is responsible for placing
the human being, from birth onwards, into earthly life, is a creative
act of the Father God, a creative act for the Earth through the Moon
forces. Therefore inasmuch as throughout an earthly life man is
subject to the working of the Moon forces, he is already predestined
when he enters earthly existence to be exposed to impulses of a very
definite kind. Hence, too, it is the essential characteristic of a
Moon religion, a religion like that of the ancient Hebrews, in which
the Father Principle is predominant, always to attach value in the
human being only to what has been bestowed upon him through the
forces of the Father God, through the Moon forces. When Christianity
was founded, ancient Mystery-truths were still current in Christ's
environment — truths deriving, for example, from specific
phenomena of life in the earliest period
of post-Atlantean evolution. Grotesque as they seem
to-day, these phenomena were grounded in the very nature of man.

During the
first epoch of post-Atlantean civilisation, the ancient Indian epoch,
when a man had reached the age of thirty a radical change, a complete
metamorphosis, took place in his earthly life. So radical was the
change that, expressed in modern words, it would have been perfectly
possible for a man who had passed his thirtieth year to meet a
younger man whom he had known quite well, perhaps as a friend, but
when this younger man greeted him the other would simply not
understand what he was trying to do. ... When the older
man had passed the age of thirty he had forgotten everything he had
hitherto experienced on the Earth! And whatever impulse worked in him
in the later years of his life was imparted to him by the Mysteries.
This is how things were in the earliest period after the Atlantean
catastrophe. If he wanted to know what his life had been before his
thirtieth year, a man was obliged to enquire about it from the little
community around him. At the age of thirty the soul was so completely
transformed that the man was veritably a new being; he began a new
existence, just as he had done at birth. In those days it was known
that until the thirtieth year of life the forces of youth were at
work: thereafter, it was the task of the Mysteries, with the very
real impulses they contained, to see to it that a genuinely human
existence should continue in the man's soul. And this the Mysteries
were able to do because they were in possession of the secret of the Son.

Christ
lived in an age when the secrets of the
Son — I can do no more than touch upon them
here — had been lost, were known only to small circles of men.
But because of the experience undergone in His thirtieth year, Christ
was able to reveal that He, as the last to do so, had received the
Son-impulse directly from the Cosmos — in the way it must be
received if after his thirtieth year a man is to be dependent
upon the Sun forces just as hitherto he was dependent upon the Moon
forces. Christ has enabled men to understand that the
Son-principle within him is the Sun Being once awaited in the
Mysteries but then as a Being not yet on the Earth. And so, just as
in the ancient Mysteries men had gazed into the secrets of the Sun,
it was made clear to them that their gaze must now turn to the
Christ, realising that now the Sun Mystery had entered into man. In
the first centuries of Christianity this wisdom was completely
exterminated. Star-wisdom, cosmic wisdom, was exterminated and
a materialistic conception of the Mystery of Golgotha gradually took
shape; Christ was thought of as nothing more than a being who had
dwelt in Jesus but men were unwilling to realise what had actually
come to pass.

Those who
were true knowers in the first Christian centuries were able to
say: As well as the Father God there is God the Son, the Christ God.
The Father God rules over whatever is predetermined in man because it
is born with him and works in him as the forces of Nature. It is upon
this principle that the Hebrew religion is based. But by the side of
it, Christianity places the power of the Son which during the course
of man's life draws into his soul as a creative force, making him
free and enabling him to be reborn, realising that in his earthly
life he can become something that
was not predetermined by the Moon forces at birth.
— Such was the essential impulse of Christianity in the first
centuries of its existence.

Mohammedanism set its face against this impulse in its
far-reaching decree: There is no God save the God proclaimed by
Mohammed. It is a retrogression to the
pre-Christian principle, but clothed in a new
form — as was inevitable six hundred years after the founding
of Christianity. The God of Nature, the Father God — not
a God of freedom by whom men are led on to freedom — was
proclaimed as the one and only God. Within Arabism, where
Mohammedanism was making headway, this was favourable for a revival
and renewal of the fruits of ancient cultures, and such a revival,
with the exclusion of Christianity, did indeed take place in the
Orient, on a magnificent scale. Together with the warlike campaigns
of Arabism there spread from East towards the West — in Africa
as it were enveloping Christianity — an impulse to revive
ancient culture.

Over in
Asia, Arabism was cultivated with great brilliance at the Court
of Haroun al Raschid
— at the time when Charles the Great was
reigning in Europe. But whereas Charles the Great hardly progressed
beyond the stage of being able to read and write, of developing the
most primitive rudiments of culture, great and illustrious
learning flourished at the Court of Haroun al Raschid. It cannot,
perhaps, be said that Haroun al Raschid in himself was an entirely
good man, but he possessed a comprehensive, penetrating and
ingenious mind — a universal mind in the best sense. He
gathered at his Court all the sages who were the bearers of whatever
knowledge was available at that time: poets, philosophers, doctors,
theologians, architects — all these branches of learning flourished
at the Court of Haroun al Rashid, brought thither by his genius.

At this
Court there lived a most distinguished and significant
personality, one who — in an incarnation earlier than the one
at the Court of Haroun al Raschid — had been an Initiate in the
true sense. You will ask: Does an Initiate, then, not remain an
Initiate as he passes through his incarnations? It is possible for a
man to have been a deep Initiate in an earlier epoch and then, in a
new epoch, he must use the body and receive the education which this
later epoch has to offer. In such a case the forces deriving from the
earlier incarnation will have to be held in the subconsciousness and
whatever is in keeping with the current civilisation will have to be
developed. There are men who seem, outwardly, to be products of
the particular civilisation in which they are living; but their
manner of life enables one to perceive in them the existence of
deeper impulses; in earlier times they were Initiates. Nor do they
lose the fruits of Initiation; out of their subconsciousness they act
in accordance with its principles. But they cannot do otherwise than
adapt themselves to the conditions of the existing civilisation.

The
personality of whom tradition says that he made magnificent provision
for all the sciences at the Court of Haroun al Raschid was only one
of the most eminent sages of his time, with a genius for organisation
so outstanding that he was virtually the source of much that was
achieved at the Court of Haroun al Raschid.

The spread
of Arabism continued for many centuries, as we know from the wars
waged by Europe in an attempt to keep it within bounds. But that was
not the end of it: the souls who were once active in Arabism passed
through the gate of death, developed onwards in the spiritual world
and remained connected, in a sense, with their work. This was
what happened in the case of the Individualities of Haroun al Raschid
and of the wise Counsellor who lived at his Court.

To begin
with, let us follow Haroun al Raschid. He passes through the gate of
death and develops onwards in the spiritual world. In its external
form, Arabism is repulsed; Christianity implants itself into Middle
and Western Europe in the exoteric form it has gradually acquired.
But although it is impossible to continue to be active in the old
form of Mohammedanism, of Arabism, in Europe, it is very possible for
the souls who once shared in this brilliant culture at the Court of
Haroun al Raschid and there received the impulse for further
achievements, to work on. And that is what they do.

We find
that Haroun al Raschid himself reincarnates in the renowned
personality of
Francis Bacon, Lord Bacon
— the distinguished Englishman whose
influence has affected the whole of modern scientific thinking, and
therewith much that is to be found in the minds of human beings
to-day. Haroun al Raschid could not disseminate from London, from
England, a form of culture strictly aligned with Arabism ... this
soul was obliged to make use of the form of Arabism that was possible
in the West. But the fundamental trend and tendency of what Bacon
poured into European thinking is the old Arabism in the new form. And
so Arabism lives in the scientific thinking of to-day, because
Francis Bacon was the reincarnated Haroun al Raschid.

The sage
who had lived at his Court also passed through the gate of death, but
he took a different path. He could not come down into a stream of
culture as materialistic as that into which Francis Bacon could
enter; he had inevitably to remain within a more spiritual stream.
And so it came about that in the epoch when the influence of Francis
Bacon was also taking effect, another individuality was
working — in this case in Middle Europe —
one who in his life of soul encountered what had issued from
the soul of the reborn Haroun al Raschid. We see the Bacon stream
pouring out from England to Middle Europe, from West to East,
bringing Arabism in the form it had acquired in its sweep across
Spain and France. It is comprehensible, therefore, that the tenor and
content of this soul should differ from the tenor and content of that
other soul — who passed through the gate of death, during the
period of existence in the spiritual world directed its gaze toward
Eastern and Middle Europe, and was reborn in Middle Europe
as Amos Comenius. He resuscitated what he had learned from
oriental wisdom at the Court of Haroun
al Raschid inasmuch as in the seventeenth century
he was the one who with much forcefulness promulgated the thought
that the evolution of mankind is pervaded by organised spirituality.
It is often said, superficially, that Comenius believed in the
Kingdom of a Thousand Years. That is a trivial way of putting it. The
truth is that Comenius believed in definite epochs in the evolution
of humanity; he believed that historical evolution is organised from
the spiritual world. His aim was to show that spirituality surges and
weaves through the whole of Nature; he wrote a
“Pan-Sophia.” There is a deeply spiritual trend in what
he achieved. He became an educational reformer. As is known, his aim
in education was to achieve concrete perceptibility
(Anschaulichkeit)
but a thoroughly spiritual perceptibility, not as in materialism. I
cannot deal with this in detail but can only indicate how Arabism in
its Western form and in its Oriental form issued from what arose in
Middle Europe from the meeting of the two spiritual impulses
connected with Bacon and Comenius.

Many
aspects of the civilisation of Middle Europe can become intelligible
to us only when we see how
Arabism — in the form in which it could now be
re-cast — was actually brought over from Asia by individuals
who had once lived at the Court of Haroun al Raschid. This shows us
how human Individuality is an active factor in the evolution of
history. And then, by studying examples as striking as these, we can
learn from them how karma works through the incarnations. As I have
said on various occasions, what we learn from this study can be
applied to our own incarnation. But to begin with we must have
concrete examples.

Let us now
take an example in which this country will be particularly
interested. Let us take the example of Conrad Ferdinand
Meyer, the Swiss poet. The very personality of Conrad
Ferdinand Meyer, apart from his poetry, may well arouse interest. He
is certainly a remarkable personality. When he was composing his
poems which flow along in wonderful rhythms, one can perceive how at
every moment the soul was prone to slip out of the body. In the
wonderful forms of Conrad Ferdinand Meyer's poems and of his
prose-poems too, there is a quality belonging intrinsically to the
soul. Many times in his earthly life he was destined to suffer from a
clouding of consciousness when this separation of the soul-and-spirit
from the physical body became too pronounced. There was only a loose
connection between the soul-and-spirit and the physical body —
this is quite apparent when we study the poems or the personality of
Conrad Ferdinand Meyer. We say to ourselves at once that this
Individuality which in the Conrad Ferdinand Meyer incarnation was
only loosely connected with the physical body, must surely have
passed through very remarkable experiences in earlier earthly lives.

Now
investigation of earlier earthly lives is by no means always easy.
Disillusionments and set-backs of every description have to be
encountered in the course of such investigation. For this
reason, what I say about reincarnations is most emphatically not for
the purpose of satisfying cravings for sensation but always in order
to shed deeper illumination upon the course of history.

As we
follow the life of Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, particularly in the
light of this loose connection between the soul-and-spirit and the
body, we are led back to a very early incarnation in the sixth
century A.D. We are led
to an Individuality who, to begin with, eludes the spiritual
intuition with which these things are investigated. Spiritually
we are thrust back from this Individuality who in his life in Italy
was finding his way into Christianity in the form in which it was
spreading at that time ... we can never get really near him. And then
we seem to be thrown back again to the Conrad Ferdinand
Meyer-incarnation, so that when in this investigation of an earlier
incarnation we really seem to have got hold of the incarnation in the
sixth century, we have to come back again to the later Conrad
Ferdinand Meyer, without having properly understood the connection
between these two incarnations. .. until at last the solution of the
riddle dawns. We notice that in the mind of Conrad Ferdinand
Meyer there is a thought that puzzles and misleads us — a
thought which was also expressed in his story The Saint,
dealing with Thomas Becket, the Chancellor-Archbishop of Canterbury
in the twelfth century at the Court of Henry (II) of England.

It is not
until we follow the connections of the thoughts and feelings working
in Conrad Ferdinand Meyer while he was writing this narrative that we
gain any real insight into how his mind was working. We are led as it
were from a clouding of consciousness into clarity, then again a
clouding, and so on. And finally we come to the conclusion that there
must be some special significance in the thought that runs through
Conrad Ferdinand Meyer's story; it must have deep roots. And then we
hit upon the clue: this thought comes from an impulse in an earlier
earthly life, the life when the Individuality of the later Conrad
Ferdinand Meyer lived at a minor Court in Italy and played an
important part in the development of Christianity. In that life he
had an unusual experience. Gradually we discover that this
Individuality was sent with a Christian Mission from Italy to England
and this Mission founded the Archbishopric of Canterbury. The
Individuality who later became Conrad Ferdinand Meyer was, on the one
side, deeply affected by that form of art which has since died out
but was prevalent in Italy in the fourth and fifth
centuries A.D. and
subsequently elaborated in the Italian mosaics. The Individuality of
Conrad Ferdinand Meyer lived and worked in this environment and
then, filled with the impulse of contemporary Christianity,
accompanied the Mission to England. After having participated
in the founding of the Archbishopric of Canterbury, this
individual was murdered, in strange circumstances, by an
Anglo-Saxon chieftain.

This
happening lived on as an impulse in the soul. And when this soul was
born as Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, the destiny of that earlier time was
still alive in the
subconscious ... the murder in England ... it has something
to do with the Archbishopric of Canterbury! Just as a
remembrance is often evoked by the sound of a word, so it was
in this case ... “I once had something to do with
Canterbury.” And the impulse becomes an urge in Conrad
Ferdinand Meyer's soul to describe, not his own destiny, for that
remains in the subconscious, but the similar destiny of Thomas
Becket, the Chancellor of Henry II of England and at the same time
Archbishop of Canterbury.

The
strange infirmity of soul suffered by Conrad Ferdinand Meyer
also causes experience of his own destiny to slip over into that of
the other personality known to him from history.

During the
period of the Thirty Years' War, when such chaotic conditions
prevailed in Middle Europe, this Individuality had been
incarnated as a woman. And all the chaos of those times profoundly
affected the Individuality now incarnate in a female body. This woman
married a rather uncouth, unpolished personality who fled from the
conditions then prevailing in Germany to the region of
Graubünden in Switzerland.
And there this couple lived ... the woman deeply sensitive to
the chaos of the impressions around her, the man more plebeian.

From the
far-reaching events of that time the soul had absorbed all that
struggles to come forth again in
Jürg Jenatsch.
The thoughts and emotions rise up again in
Conrad Ferdinand Meyer from what he had experienced in those earlier
circumstances. The difficulty is that the impressions welled up
in Conrad Ferdinand Meyer's soul but that he felt compelled to
transform them, because his life in the world was such that impulses
were constantly rising up into his soul-and-spirit which then, in the
Conrad Ferdinand Meyer-incarnation, were responsible for the very
loose connection between his soul-and-spirit and his physical body.

This will
indicate to you how impulses from olden times work over in a
remarkable way into a man's thinking, feeling, perception and
artistic achievements. The truth of such things will quite certainly
never be discovered by speculation or intellectual thinking but only
in genuine spiritual vision.

Personalities who attract one's attention in some earthly
life are especially interesting from the point of view of
their reincarnations. There is a personality who is
greatly loved and held in high esteem, above all in this country,
through whom we can discern how souls pass through their earthly
lives. When we have real knowledge of these matters they turn out to
be different from what one would naturally assume.

There is a
soul ... I was able to find this soul for the first
time occupying a kind of priestly office in ancient Mysteries. I say,
a kind of priestly office, for although he was not a
priest of the highest rank his position in the Mysteries enabled him
to do a great deal for the education of souls. In that
incarnation he was a noble character, full of goodness of heart
which his connection with the Mysteries had developed in him. About a
hundred years before the birth of Christ it was the destiny of this
personality, in line with the customs of the times, to serve under a
cruel slave-owner as the foreman or manager of a host of slaves whose
work was hard and heavy and who could only be handled in the way that
was the accepted practice in those days. This personality must not be
misjudged or misunderstood. The conditions prevailing in
ancient civilisations must be seen in a different light from those of
to-day; we must understand above all what it meant for this
fundamentally noble personality to have been incarnated a hundred
years before the founding of Christianity as a kind of
foreman-manager of a host of slaves. It was impossible for him always
to act in accordance with his own impulses — that was his
hard destiny. But at the same time he had established a definite
relationship with the souls living in the hard-worked slaves.
He obeyed the crueller personality of whom I have spoken (his
‘chief’ we should say to-day) but in such
circumstances antipathies and sympathies are formed. ... And
when the one who often with a bleeding heart had carried out the
orders he received, passed through the gate of death, his soul
encountered the souls who had felt, for him too, a certain hatred.
This lived itself out in the life between death and rebirth and
established connections of soul-and-spirit which then worked as
impulses, preparing for the next earthly life.

In the
nature of things, karmic connections are formed between all human
beings who have to do with one another. It was also destiny that the
Individuality of whom I am speaking, who was a kind of slave-overseer
and connected karmically with the chief whose orders he was bound to
obey, should have made himself guilty in a certain
way — it was really innocence and guilt at
the same time — of all the misery caused by the cruelty of his
chief. He acquiesced in it, not out of any impulse of his own but
impelled by the force majeure
of customs and circumstances. Thus a
karmic tie was established between the two. In the life between death
and rebirth this took shape in such a way that the former
slave-overseer was born again in the ninth century
A.D. as a
woman: she became the wife of the one who had been the cruel chief
— and in this relationship lived through much that constituted
the karmic adjustment of what I have described as a kind of
‘innocent guilt’ in connection with the cruelties that
had been committed. But these experiences deepened the soul: much of
what had been present in the ancient, priestly incarnation emerged
once again, but overshadowed by great tragedy. Circumstances in the
ninth century brought this wedded couple into connection with many
human beings in whom there were living the souls, now
reincarnated, of those who had been together with them as
slaves. As a general rule, human souls are reborn during the same
time-period. And again in this case there was a connection in the
life on the Earth.

The souls
who had once worked under the
slave-overseer now lived together in spatial
proximity as a fairly extensive community. The official servant of
the community — but a servant of fairly high rank —
was the individual who had once been the cruel slave-owner. He had
dealings with all the inhabitants of the community and experienced
from them nothing but trouble; he was not their governor but it was
his duty to look after many of their affairs. The wife lived through
all this at his side. We find, therefore, that a number of human
beings are associated with these two personalities. But the karma
that had bound the two together — the erstwhile slave-owner and
his overseer — this karmic tie was thereby done with. The
ancient priest-individuality was no longer bound to the other; but
the tie with the other souls remained, precisely because in the
incarnation about 100 B.C.
he had been at least the instrument for much
that had been their lot. As a woman, this Individuality brought only
blessing to the community, for her deeds were performed with the
greatest goodness and kindness, despite the infinitely tragic
experiences she was obliged to undergo.

All these
shared experiences, all that wove the threads of
karma — it all went on working, and during the
next period of life between death and rebirth (after the ninth
century and on into the modern age) impulses took shape once again
whereby these human beings were held together. And now, the souls who
had once been the slaves and later on came together in a village
community — these souls were born again, not in any kind of
external community but at least during the same period of time. So
that there was again the possibility of relationship with the
Individuality — now reborn — who had been the
slave-overseer a hundred years before the Christian era, and the
woman in the ninth century A.D.
For this Individuality was reborn as Pestalozzi.
The souls who were also reborn more or less as
contemporaries in order that karma might be fulfilled — these
souls whose relationship to him was as I have described, became the
pupils for whom Pestalozzi now performed deeds of untold blessing!

When one
studies life and behind life as it presents itself perceives the
working of souls from incarnation to
incarnation ... certainly it is disturbing and astounding,
for things are always different from what the intellect might
conjecture. Yet life's content is immeasurably deepened when it is
studied in this kind of context. I think, moreover, that a man
himself has really gained something when he has studied such
connections. If they are drawn forth — often with very great
difficulty — from their spiritual backgrounds, and if one
points, as I have only been able to do in sketchy outline to-day, to
what is present in visible existence, one perceives how karma works
through the course of human life. Verily, life acquires serious
backgrounds when we pay attention to studies of this kind; and they
can be understood if with unprejudiced minds we observe what then
presents itself in the external world.

Anthroposophy does not exist in order to expound theories
about repeated earthly lives or to give tabulated details of every
kind, but to reveal, in all their concrete reality, the spiritual
foundations of life. Men will
look into the world with quite different eyes once the veils are
lifted from these things. One day, if destiny permits, we shall have
to speak of how they can play a part, too, in the actual deeds of
men. Such knowledge will certainly show that concrete studies of
karma are needed by our civilisation as an impetus and a deepening. I
wanted to-day merely to lay before you these actual examples of
karma. The personalities in question
are well-known figures in history. Study them closely
and you will find confirmation of much that I have said.